On Facebook this morning I completed one of those 10 Most Influential Albums challenges. If you’re not on Facebook and/or not one of my Facebook friends, I won’t bore you with my 10 selections and brief comments on each. If you’re here in the Halls of Rock, you already know me too well. We go deeper than Top 10 lists, don’t we?
However, my 10th selection this morning was The Beatles‘ Let It Be. Just now a friend informed me that today is the 50th anniversary of that album’s release. I had no idea. That coincidence blew my mind. Happy 50th to one of my top 10 influential albums! If you are curious as to why this is the only Beatles album I selected, well, I didn’t want to cram up my list, but there’s more…after the jump!
If Thursday is Throwback Thursday is Friday The Future of Music Fridays? A friend posted the following on her Facebook page, and it elicited quite a reaction in this household. Mr. Royale will be sharing it with his high school students. I’ll be interested in what you think.
On his Facebook page, would-be Roxborough resident and Newbridge mayor Jon Wurster, partner-in-crime with Tom Scharpling on The Best Show on WFMU (my favorite 3 hours of radio—heard over the Web, often after the fact, in archive form) and drummer for Superchunk (among many others), asked the following question of his close, personal friends, a question that is right up our alley. Jon has approved of us re-posting this for discussion here. He looks forward to your responses.
News broke recently about a Peter Buck solo LP that’s in the pipeline. This will be the first the world hears his singing voice (as far as I know). What other major songwriting forces never sang in their bands? My entries (and let me know if I’m wrong, just don’t preface it with “You stupid idiot”):
Johnny Marr?
Did Robbie Robertson sing lead on any Band songs?
Greg Ginn
Jimmy Page
Steve Harris
Angus and Malcolm Young
Johnny Ramone (didn’t write a lot but…)
Neil Peart
Tom Scholz
Eddie Van Halen
Iommi/Butler
Nikki Sixx
Did Walter Becker sing lead ever?
Has anyone but James Hetfield sung lead on a Metallica song?
Last night, I drove the 100 or so miles from DeeCee to Richmond, VA to see a band I get kidded around a lot for ’round these parts: ZZ Top.
Some of you might be surprised to learn that this was the first time I’d ever seen the band, given my fan-boy love for almost all things Zeezy, and particularly Gibbonsian. Nevertheless, there I was, at a peculiar, very small outdoor venue (seemed more like a neighborhood park, and there couldn’t have been more than 1500 people there) — and I was frankly surprised how much the band rocked — with a weird, loping groove they seem to have developed in their dotage. I’ve never heard anything like it. If it weren’t mathematically impossible, I’d say that the whole band was playing behind the beat. Billy’s playing was especially stellar — I was worried what I might see, after witnessing some pretty shambolic TV appearances in recent years. No worries there; the Rev was ON.
Anyhow, the show was definitely worth the $20 I paid to see it, and might have even been worth the five-hour round-trip drive. But that’s not why I write!
I’m writing because ZZ Top was on my increasingly short list of “bands I really need to see while I still can/really should have seen while I had the chance.” I’m here to share my list, indicating whether or not I got to see the artists on it — and I hope you’ll share yours. Please note that historical impossibilities are not allowed — but missed opportunities are. Here, then, is my list, in no particular order, to serve as example: Continue reading »
I know that some of you have been dedicating your time-wasting efforts to Facebook. That’s cool. I have also been making some time to help this social networking site jump the shark. Everybody needs the chance to rub virtual elbows with “friends” you otherwise wouldn’t have made the effort to stay in touch with, as proven by the fact that before Facebook you had not been in touch with them for the past 5 to 10 years.
I know, too, that there’s a desire to allow various “apps” into our web-interactive lives to enable us to share personal details with friends, such as our 5 Movies That Shaped My Breakfast Choice This Morning and our 5 Movies That We Thought About While Taking a Dump Later in the Afternoon. Some of the apps are pretty cool, allowing us to easily embed album cover or DVD box images into our lists. It’s not so easy to do things like that in the Halls of Rock, and beside, Mr. DogModic himself frowns on the posting of too many lists without supporting thoughts. He thinks we can do more than that. He thinks we should provide each other opportunities for disagreements, tangents, and the like. Shoot, this place doesn’t even allow us the option of clicking on a little “thumb’s up” icon. WTF?!?!
Do not despair: I hear you, Facebook-inquisitive Townspeople! As focused and unwavering as you may think I am in encouraging us to meet the objectives of Rock Town Hall, I’m a bigger and baser man than that. I don’t want you wasting your hard-earned blow-off time on other sites when you could be here, not only rubbing virtual elbows with knowledgeable, interesting, humorous rock nerds but skinning virtual knees and elbows as you dive for the loose balls of rock criticism! In this bigger and baser spirit, I offer you Rock Town Hall’s first quiz, the What Townsperson Are You? quiz. Our apps are not yet as advanced as those you might have found so engaging on Facebook, but answer the following questions and within 24 hours of your submission our specially devised Rock Town Hall apps will spit out the answer you’ve been secretly dying to know! Continue reading »
